Tag: Literature

JUST HOW BIG IS THAT TOWN WITH THE MILLS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I began drafting Big Inca versus a New Pony Express Rider, I was coming off a two-year stint that had me traveling across the Northeast, including the Atlantic Seaboard from Maine through Virginia. I hunkered down in Baltimore to concentrate on a handful of major writing projects in a very intense year of self-imposed sabbatical. (No university support, if you were wondering.)

While Big Inca marked a sharp departure from my other works, moving into dark subconscious realms and mysterious meanderings, it did incorporate castoffs from some of the other projects. The prompt, though, was a vague dream of restoring landmark mills beside a river, a project that could have happened just about anywhere in the region I’d been traveling.

We think of them as textile mills, and many of them were. But the water power could be employed for just about any kind of manufacturing, as I’ve since learned, from machine-making itself to shoes to clothespins to locomotives, as well as the grain and sawmill operations I’d been introduced to on our trips to historic sites in my childhood, starting with the overshot wheel and grindstones in Carillon Park in Dayton and the reconstructed Spring Mill village in Indiana.

As a youth, I’d also owned a gorgeous volume the duPont company had published to celebrate its history, and my favorite parts were the illustrations of its early mills and supporting waterways and lands in Delaware.

So there was already a degree of romance in my thinking about the use of old-fashioned waterpower.

Then, in my first job after college, I was introduced to the ruins of cigar factories beside a dam in the Susquehanna River, a tangled patch I returned to frequently, as I describe in my set of poems, Susquehanna. Just how would the mills have looked, anyway? And how would they have shaped the adjacent neighborhood, a setting reflected in Riverside, another of my poetry collections?

My more recent employment had me calling on places like Fall River, Massachusetts, with its array of vacant stone mills, as well as towns incorporating the more common red brick versions, large and small.

Add to that mention of the entrepreneurial impact of the many mills that once stood along the Jones Falls in Baltimore itself, before the freeway wound through the sites, and I was quickly writing.

Since releasing the novel, though, I’ve been wondering about scale. Just how big a town are we dealing with? And, for that matter, how big a mill yard?

In the back of my head I’d imagined something along the lines of Binghamton, New York, a city of roughly 50,000 – large enough to move about in inconspicuously but not too big to be, well, anywhere in the corporate radar these days. Or, more accurately, the recent past when the action takes place.

That’s had me looking more closely at old mill towns, of course, and asking if this one or that could be the right setting. Security, by the way, adds another consideration – I wouldn’t want the novel’s mills sitting right downtown, as they do where I now live or in several of the neighboring towns. Somersworth, to the north, has train tracks separating its old mills from the rest of the town, and Binghamton had a freeway.

A smaller town, in contrast, might simply have too many nosy neighbors who would insist on knowing everything about a newcomer like Bill, and that wouldn’t do. Still, there are some beautiful sites for imagining as you move about.

WHO INVITED INCA INTO MY NARRATIVE, ANYWAY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Why Inca, anyway? For starters, when it came to conceiving my novel Big Inca versus a New Pony Express Rider, I seem to recall an attraction to the wordplay, Inca for Inc., befitting a story about corporate intrigue.

Maybe there was even a sense of llama and alpaca wool as raw materials for the abandoned waterpower textile mills that instead become the front for covert business activity.

I was already aware of how much indigenous lore remained lost or buried in the American inheritance and wondered how much more might be festering somewhere. Even before issues of illegal immigration entered the picture, I was curious about the alternatives lurking in the imagined jungles of Latin America. Maya and Aztec, for example, also had rich imperial cultures that contrasted with the Spanish invaders.

The novel takes on its own meandering along the edges of consciousness and subconscious currents. Just what are we doing in our careers, anyway, at least in the face of ultimate existential purpose? And what is the allure of corporate politics, strategy, and gamesmanship, at least in the higher offices? Bill may be out in the sticks, but he is a puppet of sorts for the Boss. A player. Or maybe just his apprentice. Either way, he’s green and supple.

Here we encounter, however dimly, a darkness conquered by another darkness, perhaps crueler under its Christian veneer. Yet a New World Native undercurrent runs counter the peasantry of Old Europe, and pagan influences infuse both sides in the millpond of Bill’s labors. As for the company paying his Bill’s bills? It’s at least as mysterious as the Inca itself.

LET’S CAST THE SPOTLIGHT AWAY FROM POOR JOB

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Could it be that the Book of Job isn’t so much about the suffering of Job, a man of faith, as it is a critique of conventional religion and religiosity itself?

In my volume Eden Embraced, I approach Job’s plight as if the text were a Hebrew Upanishad, one paralleling a type of classic Hindu writings. Yes, the thread holding the plot together follows one innocent man’s spiritual journey through unspeakable suffering. Blameless as he is – and uncomforting as God’s role is here – Job would have every right to turn in other directions, though he chooses to remain faithful.

The story is endlessly troubling, especially for those who read it from a legalistic perspective. From the outset, God is arrogant, even vain and cruel, rather than compassionate or even all-knowing. And Satan, a member of the sacred council, could be a favored golfing buddy arranging another wager.

The setup can easily lead to contortions as a believer attempts to reconcile other, more conventional, definitions of the Holy One with the action at hand, especially when Job’s buddies begin to weigh in with their platitudes. In many interpretations, Job’s faithfulness is held up as an example to emulate, no matter what. Fat lot of encouragement, right?

As a writer, though, I can see the axiom of trying to address a situation by taking an opposing, uncommon position, which is where I see the story of Job originating. After all, we are faced with the question of just where does evil originate, along with human suffering. Why not blame the Creator?

Is there even a large measure of humor in this? Take the events over the top, asking just what more can happen to poor Job? And that’s where his so-called friends step in, adding misery to his plight and their condemnation rather than comfort.

Would it be nearly as compelling if they did the right thing? If Mother Teresa had showed up instead?

By the way, I delight in the happy ending, which many purists object to as a later revision that doesn’t fit with the general thrust of the plot. Feel free to weigh in as you will.

AND KEY WEST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

1

joining me as a bowsprit
on my usual whale-watch vessel
now wintering in Florida, a day trip
en route to Key West

a lonely teen evokes
my lover in college
the year before I met her before

two dolphins leap in front of us and

in his rounds, a crewman explains

“you don’t see that often, especially so far
from shore . you saw them, didn’t you?
you’re very lucky”

an omen, then, to the past

2

in town, roosters in banty yards
on back streets, warning

BEWARE
OF DOG

such a disappointing declaration
to swarming eyeballs
anticipating something more exotic
a gator, perchance, or snakepit
or open voodoo performed with hot sauce
please understand, you’re approaching Haiti

3

acknowledging this is an island of Biblical proportions
I stand outside Hemingway’s veranda
and shout prophetically

KELSEY SENDS
HER REGARDS

meaning her scorn
for required high school reading

this touch of sarcasm gleaned
teaching Sunday school
in New Hampshire

this day, when I’m my own old man of the sea,
is held in the tentacles of Genesis

4

again the Gulf waters roil
and the decision is announced
we’ll be sent back by land (one)
rather than any Paradise Lost
without moonlight
in the dark
road houses and health food
storefronts along the midnight
highway become fragments
of reggae notes, the songs of another
vanished lover, between mangrove

5

even on a subtropical bus
cockroaches climb toilet walls
mimicking addresses I’ve left

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.

REINTERPRETING A BIBLICAL TEXT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

In fleshing out minor characters in Scripture, performance artist Peterson Toscano shared an insight: “feet” in the text (and I believe he mentioned “thighs,” too) can be a euphemism for “penis” or “genitals.” So when Zepporah tosses her son’s bloody foreskin at Moses’ “feet” (note the parallel), she’s screaming, “What kind of man are you who would place us all in jeopardy!”

Much of the Hebrew Bible is likely far “earthier” than we’re likely to hear from the pulpit. How much do we lose, then, in translation? How much are fundamentalists, too, missing?

A RATHER CHECKERED CAREER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For someone who has engaged in a writing life his whole adulthood, I’ve had a rather checkered career as a reader. After a precocious outburst in the classics – Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in second- or third- or fourth-grade (not as class assignments, of course – who knows what we were reading there), I found myself largely oblivious to fiction. My attention turned to history and biography (the Landmark series, especially) and then science and politics. Non-fiction, with a sense of content. Fiction came later, in high school, curiously through political fiction – Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, 1984, rather than any of the traditional British canon. Throw a little Shakespeare in, and I was off – into journalism. (Let me mention that Huck Finn was much harder reading in my junior year of high school than it had been when I was younger; as a novice reader, I wasn’t tripped up by the strange spellings of dialect.)

In college, for whatever reason, I developed a passion for Samuel Johnson. Not for his moralizing as much as the sarcasm, I’d say, as well as a fascination with the baroque richness of his style. Maybe it was just the force of personality projecting from the writing. And then came Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac … the widening stream.

Surprisingly, a major turning point occurred in the span when I had the fewest opportunities to read – my years living in the ashram, a monastic community in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. Out of the practice of meditation and reflection, however, I began to approach literature in a new way. The quietude opened poetry to me, both as a reader and a writer. The experience also introduced me to mythology, with the Hindu stories being more fantastic and meaningful than anything I had encountered in the Greek and Roman stream. Later, I was able to leap from this into the stories of the Bible as well, returning me to my previously unknown roots.

Others have written of being a promiscuous reader. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to reading that way – at least, not any more. One of the ashram exercises, in fact, was a “reading fast,” meaning written words, rather than food. It’s all a matter of focus. That is, when I’m eating, I want to choose to concentrate on my food rather than a text. When I’m traveling, I want to see where I’m going. (Airport terminals, on the other hand, or stretches before takeoff, are another matter — they are among those place of limbo.) Later, when the newspaper first comes off the press, I found I could no longer focus on the stories – not after a shift of heavy editing. If anything, my head was so full of disjointed stimulation I needed to slow down to savor what I’d already encountered. For that matter, I prefer walking to jogging, with its restoration of a natural pace. I rush too many places and deliver on too many deadlines as it is. When I enter someone’s home for the first time, I must take care to pay attention to them more than the spines on their bookshelves. Now what were you saying?

I read, then, with greater focus these days. More selectively. I can no longer have classical music playing in the background. (It used to provide a barrier for noise from my family or neighbors.) Now, I immerse myself in what is before me. The text, then, as in scripture.

~*~

Out of all of this, my own work emerges. As a writer, I strive to create a linear progression. That is, the parts must advance is some sort of logic. Curiously, in my own work, I am often inspired by a Hegelian model – thesis, antithesis, synthesis – as drawn from cinema theory. On a wider scale, my earlier interests surface in new ways, resulting in something more akin to a matrix or spiral or collage than a straight line. I have been called a Mixmaster, with good reason. On top of it all, in my many moves about the continent, I’ve found myself exploring the soul of each place – something wine aficionados consider, in a smaller range, when they discuss terroir.

A CASE FOR NURTURING SERIOUS READERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

One of the challenges facing contemporary society is the shrinking percentage of active readers. (I say percentage, but fear what we face is more a shrinkage of actual numbers.) It’s not simply the decline in readers of fiction or the number of people who recite poetry from heart, but the lack of literary engagement of any kind. So I rat on myself early here, with my belief that the act of reading carries social value – especially when serious literature is the subject.

It is no mere coincidence that Americans’ widespread ignorance of history and our political system has accompanied the growing addiction to a sensual media orgy – large-screen television, movies, rock music – while habitual reading, including newspapers, has been declining. That is, what is superficial and easy – and ephemeral — has the upper hand. Little is demanded of the receptor, and loud excitement, rather than a deepened awareness, is the expectation; escapism, rather than engagement with life itself. Several European writers have suggested something more troubling is at work – the loss of reflective people, contemplative individuals – a theme I see developed, obliquely, in Stephen L. Carter’s Integrity and the labor of moral discernment. In other words, is the mind being enlarged or merely numbed? The fact that so many people cannot name their own senators or governors or are largely ignorant of geography, yet recognize countless actors and rockers points toward a disintegration of community and social service.

Paradoxically, the act of reading is largely a private enterprise. It’s a dialogue between a reader and a writer, sometimes separated by continents or centuries. It requires more activity from the receptor than a movie, short song, or television sit-com does – in fact, one of the concerns these days is the atrophied state of the imagination among those who have been raised on “electronic media” rather than the printed word or, for that matter, stories read aloud or in radio broadcasts. (There are, after all, degrees of imaginative challenge.) In the act of reading, there are no visible intermediaries – no actors, soundtrack, directors, sets, or costumes. The editor or printer or bookseller is of an entire order altogether. Here, the reader and the writer engage in a dance of the soul or a passionate argument. (Serious readers can be as demanding as lovers when it comes to this relationship.)

But the act of reading can also take us into the existence of another person, viewing the world from within that context. A movie, in contrast, leaves us looking at that person, hoping for a hint of emotion or profundity. The author can reflect on the situation, suggest ranges of experience, voice moral struggles in ways a movie might only touch in passing.

Here I think, too, of large-scale musical compositions – symphonies or string quartets, for instance – that demand intense listening, inducing reflection and emotional awareness. Like reading, the audience for serious music is in decline – and with it, a link to the riches of the past and its aspirations and wisdom.

FINE PRINT CRITICISM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

You know that reaction after reading a page that leaves you with a sensation of missing something. A treatise about poetry or art or theology, especially?

If you’re like me and largely autodidactic, you no doubt feel yourself an outsider. So I write from the fringe, in more ways than one. Reading some reviews and critiques, I soon wonder: Am I simply inattentive? Clueless? Ignorant? Is it that such subtlety, speaking only to the highly initiated, will never accept my own efforts? Or is it that I prefer what is simple, direct, grounded in experience and place, over what is convoluted and cloaked – even in form? Without falling into cliche or triteness?

Or am I the one, despite myself, who becomes convoluted and cloaked? How do we reach higher, anyway, in this thing called art, while striving to stay true … to whatever?

How does originality run through it all? And life?

By the way, just who are the critics writing for? Even when we ourselves turn critic.

SOMETIMES I WONDER IF PANDORA WAS A NOVELIST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it was a mistake earlier this year to reopen the draft of my latest novel, which I’d put aside in July 2015 to season. But I did. (And then, once opened, something like this can become impossible to close tight again – at least until it’s done for now, whenever it decides.)

For the most part, I’m very happy with what I found – nothing embarrassed me, and some sections struck me as quite exciting, especially when I kept asking myself, “Who wrote this!”

Still, it’s been a very slow process for what was supposed to be a read-through, mostly for continuity and consistency. Admittedly, it’s a big book – about twice the length of a typical novel, or 35,000 words more than my longest one yet published. The challenge has been in finding the blocks of time to tackle each of the 16 chapters, and moving along while I have all of the characters floating around in my head. (That alone can turn an author into a rather distant person within a household, even in the middle of conversations.)

I’d made one decision to shift as many of the verb tenses as I could to more accurately reflect the way many people speak when relating events, but determining which verb to change and which one to leave alone – even in a single sentence – could be slow hoeing. (Or is that slow rowing? Another detail to check out later. Even slow going? Yipes, it gets endless.) We’ll see how successfully the verb strategy works.

And then there were the additional details to better explain the action. Instead of big cuts, which I’d anticipated as a normal part of the process at this stage, I found a need to say more. In one chapter, I found that adding no more than two pages actually makes the section move along faster and feel shorter. Anyone else have that experience?

On top of that, as I’ve found in previous manuscripts, certain words repeat through the story and no matter how crucial their underlying meaning to the emerging theme, they simply start sounding like sour notes. In this case, independent, business, gather, vague, vision, even fit topped the demand for thesaurus treatment. Each synonym then amplifies the message and infuses a wider understanding. Still, that step’s tedious.

At the moment, I’m lifted by elation and can breathe that big sigh of relief. It’s done, for now. I’ve shipped off copies to my two harshest in-house critics and can return to other projects before those two fire back with their caustic reactions, brilliant suggestions, essential additions, more essential deletions, smarty quips for my free use, or whatever.

And when that input has gone into the manuscript, I can send it off to a round of beta readers. The ones I’m hoping will be kinder.

There’s no denying my elation, even knowing how much remains to be done before going public.